Six months since donors pledged $3.5 billion towards Gaza's recovery, many people are worse off and not a single one of the 19,000 destroyed homes has been rebuilt. 100,000 people are still homeless and many are living in makeshift camps or schools.

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam, said: "The promising speeches at the donor conference have turned into empty words.There has been little rebuilding, no permanent ceasefire agreement and no plan to end the blockade.The international community is walking with eyes wide open into the next avoidable conflict, by upholding the status quo they themselves said must change."

Only 26.8 percent of money pledged by donors six months ago has been released so far. Even when funded, many reconstruction projects have not yet begun due to restrictions on essential material under the blockade.

Tony Laurance, CEO of MAP UK, said: “The world is shutting its eyes and ears to the people of Gaza when they need it most. Reconstruction cannot happen without funds, but money alone will not be enough. With the blockade in place we are just reconstructing a life of misery, poverty and despair.”

If 26.8% of $3.5 billion has been released, and there has been little rebuilding, then what is the money going towards?

This report from the Shelter Cluster tells us, and the numbers show that somehow, tens of thousands of Gazans have managed to rebuild their homes with building materials that we are incessantly told are restricted from entering Gaza.

We see that some of the money has gone to building temporary shelters and providing rent money for Gazans who cannot move into their homes. But we also learn that there are plenty of Gazans who have rebuilt their partially damaged homes.

The report says that 144,000 homes were damaged during the war. Of those homes, nearly half - 70,700 homes - have been fully repaired.

If 49% of the homes have been repaired while the international community has only paid 27% of their pledges, clearly Israeli restrictions are not the bottleneck. In fact:

As of 15 March, over 73,000 individuals requiring ABC materials for shelter repairs have been cleared to purchase materials under the GRM. Of these, over 59,000 homeowners have procured full or partial quantities of their allocated construction material to date.

What about new homes? Why haven't any been completed? The Shelter Cluster tells us the answer to that as well:

Permanent construction of new houses can take several months and would include several stages such as design proposal, building permit approval, mobilisation of contractors and funds, construction and handover of the final build.

The homeowners are receiving the material and cash for rebuilding, but Gaza's bureaucracy is what slows them down, not lack of building materials.

Not a single person is listed as being unable to receive construction material because of Israeli restrictions. 43,000 families have the ability to purchase more building material today but they haven't done so.

Of course, the report doesn't mention that the reason many Gazans have not bothered to rebuild is because they are selling their construction materials on the black market while they take advantage of temporary shelters, some of which can last for years. Some of that material is going to Hamas to build terror tunnels.

Every single NGO that signed onto this report, including major ones like Oxfam, is willingly lying about Israel when they claim that Gazans cannot rebuild.

French children's magazine Youpi published this in its latest edition. The translation is "We call these 197 countries state...

Hasbys!

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون

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